Fun, sun and ‘agape’: Who is the True Love Christian Music Festival for?

In a simpler world, there would be little need to have to explain exactly for whom a Christian music festival is designed. For people who enjoy Christian-themed music and activities. Duh.

In a simpler world, Christianity would be purely a spiritual quest, deeply meaningful and fundamental to many, not so to others. 

But you and I don’t live in that simpler world. We live in a world where Christianity carries considerable political baggage, where it has been proudly erected as a tent pole amid the landscape of us-and-them identity politics. In this world, earthly political views have been wrapped in heavenly Christian packaging, and banal political disagreements are amplified into celestial fights of good against evil.

For both those inside that tent and outside of it, claiming a Christian worldview comes with a tangle of assumptions, some of them mean-spirited stereotypes. For many, Christians are the Jedi. For others, they represent the Empire.

So, yes, it’s pertinent to ask for whom the True Love Christian Music Festival, which takes place Saturday, July 19, in Aptos, is intended. Is it for those who want to celebrate their love of God in their preferred expressions of worship and praise, without having to worry about alienating or offending someone outside their church? If so, how is it any different than a slightly more grandiose church social? And what fair-minded person could argue against such a thing?

Or is it more outward-facing, a chance to appeal to those not fully invested in the faith — or even overtly suspicious of it? Is it for the faithful? Or is it welcoming to everyone?

Simon Cassar, an associate pastor at Calvary Chapel Aptos and one of the primary coordinators of the True Love Festival, doesn’t hesitate at that question.

“Of course, it’s open to everybody,” he said. “We want everybody to come. I mean, that’s the key. If you read your Scripture, there’s Jesus hanging out with everybody — prostitutes, tax collectors. He came for everybody.”

On one level, the festival in Aptos Village Park, now in its fifth year, is a grand celebratory coming-together of more than 25 local churches and ministries, from Boulder Creek to Corralitos to Watsonville. The festival, which in past years has attracted about 2,000 visitors, features more than a dozen bands and musical acts, in a wide variety of genres on two stages, all playing Christian-themed music, punctuated by an opening and closing prayer and an all-sing version of “Amazing Grace.”

Though the festival is open to everyone, it feels no need to soft-pedal its tenets of faith. Amid the musical performance are a number of activities designed for family fun that outsiders might find a bit unusual. A “sling fling” is a contraption that tosses people into the air as a kind of simulation of the Christian belief in the Rapture. A “Feed Daddy” attraction puts fathers in high chairs and allows their young children to feed them. Other attractions are familiar perhaps, but with a biblical spin. A climbing wall becomes a trek up Mount Sinai to touch the Ten Commandments. A potter’s wheel is available “to see how God molds and forms us.” There’s also a mechanical bull, a diaper-change race, sack races and a tug-of-war. 

“We’ve got a whole lot of people who are licensed hairdressers coming downtown to do free haircuts,” said Cassar. “We call it Delilah’s hairdressers and Samson’s barber shop. And, of course, we have to share a little bit about what Samson did to get in trouble. Because, as you know, it didn’t work out for him.”

This kind of open-house approach to contemporary Christianity could be an attraction for someone leaning in that direction for their own spiritual journey, or who wants to understand their friends and neighbors better, or just wants to find some commonality with people of different creeds. But in a divided country, political discord is a possibility as well.

Cassar clearly wants his festival to remain above the political fray, and who can blame him? When I asked him what would happen if someone showed up at the festival with an LGBTQ-friendly rainbow flag, he cited free speech:

“If you want to bring a rainbow flag, I mean what can we do? We’re going to love on you. That’s the key. We’re going to show you our love. We just ask that you don’t be disruptive.”

Does the same apply to someone arriving sporting a MAGA hat?

“I pray that they just don’t wear a MAGA hat,” he said. “I pray that they don’t promote anything that would be offensive to somebody on the opposite side.”

Cassar used the term “agape” in our interview to describe what the True Love Festival is trying to promote and spread. Agape is a term for a kind of all-enveloping and unconditional love that many Christians believe was exemplified by Jesus Christ, a form of love characterized by empathy, understanding, forgiveness and grace. It’s not a word you hear a lot in the battlegrounds of weaponized Christianity these days. But, Cassar said, agape is primary to how Christians live in this fallen world.

It may mean unconditional love, he said, but it doesn’t mean a neutrality when it comes to people’s actions. And therein lies the Christian struggle.

“Yes, agape is an unconditional love,” said Cassar. “But what do we do as Christians when we see someone walking off a cliff, and we’ve jumped off that cliff ourselves and we’ve felt that pain of falling off that cliff? We go up to them and say, ‘Hey brother or sister, that’s a cliff.’ And some say, ‘Oh, you’re being judgmental.’ I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

The wisdom here, of course, is figuring out what the “cliff” is. Obviously in realms such as addiction, violence, anti-social or self-destructive behavior, most would agree that the metaphor makes sense. But in a pluralistic world of shifting values and definitions of personal freedom, some who might appear to be tumbling down that cliff are in fact standing on solid ground.

Nevertheless, Cassar said, the mission of the True Love Festival is to engage the world, including the unbelievers. 

“That’s why we’re doing this. That’s the only reason we’re doing this, to invite everybody. Otherwise, we stay in our churches and in our four walls. But God wants to break down those walls, go out into the streets and the parks and share that beautiful love God has given us with everybody … I mean, everybody.”

The True Love Christian Music Festival takes place Saturday, July 19, from 10:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Aptos Village Park. It’s free and open to all. 

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